2018 MOTY List: Bone Collector vs. Yehi

44. Dominic Garrini vs. Fred Yehi EVOLVE 100 2/17

PAS:  Lots of great grappling to start this match as one might expect. Yehi has really strong takedowns and Garrini has fun ways to roll out of them. Watching Garrini over the last year, he has really improved the force on his strikes, he wallops Yehi with a big knee and lays in some slaps. I also really like his waistlock throw into an armbar and thought it was a cool near fall. Finish fell a little flat with me, as Yehi felt like he beat Garrini a little easily and it lacked drama. Felt like the inevitable rematch will be really good, as this had some tastes of greatness.

ER: This was among the most smoking 7 minutes of wrestling action this whole year. It had some cracks, it wasn't seamless; Garrini is still not great at occupying himself while waiting for something that's supposed to happen. He's a little too obvious when he's leaving his leg or neck hanging out there, getting a bit too still. It only really stood out here because the whole thing was worked at such a frenetic pace, that any split second of hesitation was suddenly visible. These two threw out a huge arsenal over 7 minutes, with the first 3 minutes being this awesome, fidgety paranoid grappling where neither guy wants to give an inch so they're pushing off each other but struggling at all points. Yehi had a bunch of cool takedowns in the match, a couple nice dragon screw variations, an awesome takedown where Garrini was going for a German and Yehi reversed momentum and threw him forward. Yehi moved so quick and broke out some cool stuff I've never seen: At one point Yehi head fakes Garrini into dropping down to stuff a takedown attempt, and Yehi immediately leaps through the air like Sakuraba and stomps Garrini right in his shoulder. Garrini threw some pick knees, agree with Phil that they were among the best I've seen him throw, and he has this great freak athlete-but-also-meathead charisma. Things ramped up when the grappling slowed and transitioned into these two trying to throw each other, and Garrini eats a nasty half nelson suplex and eats a dragon suplex that should damn near be illegal. Garrini doesn't take this manhandling lying down through, instead breaking out this crazy throw into an armbar, snatching Yehi out of the air, and leaps at him with a full guillotine choke trying to drag Yehi down. Yehi has come out of nowhere to be my favorite wrestler of the year. He almost always surprises me, and he almost always delivers.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST